Wow, some folks are really not comfortable with the idea of people in prison being exposed to atheism. After the Christian Post's coverage a couple of days ago of the Freethought Books Project, we saw increasingly angsty articles from Glenn Beck's The Blaze and then The Washington Times, whose headline declares that CFI "aims to turn inmates against God." JT Eberhard facepalms:

Of course, when Christians distribute their books to inmates it’s an act of compassion, a heroic display of god’s good will. When atheists do it? Well, then we’re “targeting inmates.”

Examining the data on the reported religious beliefs of prisoners, Steph Bazzle notes that though nonbelievers are a tiny minority in the system, reporting may be sketchy:

[I]t is relevant to be aware that expressing a religious preference can be an advantage in a prison in a number of ways. In some prisons, attending religious services is a convenient way to get out of a cell, and there are some religious rights that cannot be denied to a prisoner, such as possession of certain objects, the right to request certain foods, or the right to refuse to work on the Sabbath.

When public-school students enrolled in Texas’ largest charter program open their biology workbooks, they will read that the fossil record is “sketchy.” That evolution is “dogma” and an “unproved theory” with no experimental basis. They will be told that leading scientists dispute the mechanisms of evolution and the age of the Earth. These are all lies.

A UN committee takes the Vatican to task for failing to curb the crisis of sexual assault by Catholic clergy, and the Vatican offers this lame excuse, per the AP:

The Vatican insisted it had little jurisdiction to sanction pedophile priests around the globe, saying it was for local law enforcement to do so.

The Child Rights International Network releases a report on "the global scale of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church."

CFI-UK's Stephen Law does a Tehran selfie. Which I've just decided is the name of a new dance craze.

Atheists in 13 countries face execution under the law if they openly express their beliefs or reject the official state religion -- Islam in all of these cases. While this ultimate punishment may be rare, there are a number of other outrageously harsh restrictions on the basic rights of nonbelievers around the world, from revoking citizenship to denying marriage.

Some are wondering if there need to be special laws against killing Bigfoot. Mike Cox of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department says, “You don’t need a hunting license to kill something that doesn’t exist.”

Virginia’s current code is a comprehensive criminalization of consensual acts. Clearly, minors present a different issue since they cannot legally consent. However, the danger is the criminalization of consensual sexual acts between teenagers.

Today, America embraces people of all faiths and of no faith. We are Christians and Jews, Muslims and Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, atheists and agnostics. Our religious diversity enriches our cultural fabric and reminds us that what binds us as one is not the tenets of our faiths, the colors of our skin, or the origins of our names. What makes us American is our adherence to shared ideals -- freedom, equality, justice, and our right as a people to set our own course.

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Paul Fidalgo has been communications director of the Center for Inquiry since 2012. He holds a master’s degree in political management from George Washington University, and has worked previously for FairVote: The Center for Voting and Democracy and the Secular Coalition for America. Paul is also an actor and musician whose work includes five years performing with the American Shakespeare Center. He lives in Maine with his wife and kids. His blog is Near-Earth Object, and he tweets at @paulfidalgo.